My Brother Atilla The Hun [rev] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Without wisdom & self-discipline my brother Atilla
the Hun still sits in an ethical morass we were born
into, he rejected the help of a children's book series
offering a moral system which saw me through child-
hood and led me through the darkest days of my life

Sired into an ethical vacuum, Atilla rejected idealism
in mother's religion - she detested grandma & Dad
with whom he identified, sharing his fate as Conan
the Barbarian mentally fixated in a nightmare world
of violent childhood, never rising into self-respect -
and as Queen of Hearts mom simply insisting

'All ways are my ways', trying to change everyone
except herself; Atilla internalised emptiness and
never tried to reach the sublime by finding a hero
with integrity, he gave up before his life began; the
end of his story could be read in its beginning -
addicted to anything that kept life looking sullied

And empty, giving in to all temptations without
considering the needs of his loved ones, a wife
and daughters; not facing his shortcomings - just
charging on incapable of learning consideration,
kindness and the values of civilisation…

[19 December 2014]